I remember his proposal for a flat tax, but not any VAT (value added tax)...was that something added later? at the time, his notion, which also proposed ending the social security tax deduction( the biggest chunk out of many paychecks), didn't sound bad to me - a wage earner among a majority who would have done better under such a system, at least as it sounded ...
and since it never got anywhere, dumped on by right and left, I wonder ...in fact, it sounded very much like the origin of the income tax system, in which most people didn't pay anything, since taxes began at a relatively high bracket, excluding the majority of workers....
please explain the connection of brown's flat tax to Laffer/VAT... fs